Starting out as a course creator can feel overwhelming.
You have a great idea and expertise to share, but turning that into a structured, engaging online course is a different challenge. The good news is that you don’t have to figure it all out alone. Many successful creators and educators have written down their best advice on instructional design, marketing, and building a business around your knowledge.
That’s why we have curated a list of the best books about creating online courses. This list of books is here to guide you through the process, from planning your first lesson to reaching your first students.
01. Building a Story Brand by Donald Miller
This book was a game-changer for me in articulating my business’s purpose. It serves as an outstanding roadmap for crafting a compelling narrative that doesn’t just inform but actively engages listeners and successfully attracts the ideal audience for your brand.
It was instrumental in helping me dissect my competitive advantage and establish a clear, powerful distinction in the marketplace, ultimately enabling me to truly stand out in the digital landscape.
02. Atomic Habits by James Clear
For anyone who has ever battled with discipline and consistency, this book is the essential guide you’ve been searching for. Atomic Habits completely reset my approach to productivity.
It delivers a practical, powerful framework that helped me master time management and behavior control. By applying its principles, I finally started accomplishing the tasks that genuinely propel my business and personal life forward.
This is more than just a self-help book; it’s a manual for overcoming procrastination, teaching you how to get out of your own way and consistently take action, even when motivation is low.
03. Influencer by Britanny Hennessy
In today’s world, influence is everything, especially for those just launching their brand in the online space. This book is a meticulously organized guide on successfully managing the business side of content creation.
What made it a standout for me were the brilliant, practical examples of self-marketing strategies that teach you how to succeed in a saturated online environment. That guidance was absolutely gold when I first began my journey.
Without a doubt, this book represents the single best investment I made in myself at the start of my professional path.
04. Miracle Mornings by Hal Elrod
My grandma’s favorite mantra, “The early bird gets the worm,” used to just mean early Saturday morning trips to the thrift store. Now, I finally understand the wisdom behind it, and this book drove that critical life lesson home.
The text illuminates just how pivotal mornings are for successful people and stresses the necessity of having a clear, actionable strategy for that time. It was the key to finally getting my own morning routine organized and effective.
If your goal is to boost daily productivity and consistently go to bed with a genuine feeling of accomplishment, this is the book you need to read.
05. Superfans by Pat Flynn
This essential read was the companion that helped me wholeheartedly embrace every step of my entrepreneur journey, especially when I was just starting out.
In a social media landscape often obsessed with numbers and algorithms, it serves as a vital reminder that we must never forget the actual people, the supporters investing their real time and hard-earned money in our vision.
The central truth driven home is this: Acknowledging and genuinely caring about those supporters is the fastest, most sustainable path to growth. It powerfully argues that success is fundamentally about community and authentic relationship-building.
06. The Art of Possibility by RosaMund Stone Zander
In The Art of Possibility, Benjamin Zander, the dynamic conductor of the Boston Philharmonic, teams up with psychotherapist Rosamund Stone Zander to explore a revolutionary approach to personal and professional fulfillment. Through a collection of deeply moving personal anecdotes and inspiring stories, the Zanders present 12 powerful strategies designed to unleash creativity in every aspect of your life. Readers will gain essential tools to change their personal narratives, fundamentally reframing how they perceive problems and obstacles.
The book guides you in cultivating a genuinely positive outlook on the world and the infinite possibilities it offers, ultimately helping you to overcome the debilitating fear of failure. By teaching you how to create a massively ambitious vision for yourself, The Art of Possibility provides the virtual “push” needed to overcome inertia and completely reimagine yourself as an entrepreneur, artist, or whatever you aspire to be.
07. Design for How People Learn by Julie Dirksen
In Design for How People Learn, Julie Dirksen provides a highly accessible and practical guide to the science of instructional design. She demystifies the complex workings of the human brain, explaining how memory, attention, and motivation truly function in a learning context. Through engaging examples and clear explanations, Dirksen equips course creators with the essential knowledge to move beyond simply presenting information. The book is a blueprint for structuring content in a way that aligns with cognitive principles, ensuring that your students not only absorb the material but can also recall and apply it effectively in the real world. It is the definitive resource for transforming a collection of facts into a genuinely effective and memorable learning experience.
08. Map It by Cathy Moore
Map It by Cathy Moore introduces a powerful, streamlined process for designing training and learning experiences that deliver real business results. Moore challenges the traditional, content-heavy approach to course creation, advocating instead for a focus on performance and solving specific problems. The book guides you through a clear, three-step process—Map, Design, and Develop—to create scenarios and activities that simulate real-world challenges. This approach ensures that your course is not just a passive information dump, but a dynamic, action-oriented tool that helps learners bridge the gap between knowing and doing, ultimately proving the value of your educational product.
09. Show Your Work! by Austin Kleon
In Show Your Work!, artist and writer Austin Kleon offers a modern manifesto for the creative economy, urging creators to share their process, not just their finished products. This book is a powerful antidote to the fear of self-promotion, reframing the act of sharing as a generous and necessary part of the creative journey. Kleon provides ten simple rules for building an audience by letting them in on your work-in-progress, your influences, and your daily discoveries. For course creators, this means transforming the behind-the-scenes effort of course development into compelling content that builds trust, authority, and a dedicated community long before your course even launches.
10. Steal Like an Artist by Austin Kleon
Steal Like an Artist is Austin Kleon’s inspiring guide to unlocking your creativity by embracing the influence of others. Kleon argues that nothing is truly original, and that creativity is a process of collecting good ideas, remixing them, and making them your own. This book is a liberating read for any course creator who feels the pressure of needing to invent something entirely new. It provides ten transformative lessons on how to study, curate, and remix the work of others to discover your own unique voice and create content that is both fresh and deeply informed by the best ideas in your field.
11. The Lean Startup by Eric Ries
Eric Ries’s The Lean Startup has revolutionized how entrepreneurs approach innovation, and its principles are perfectly suited for course creators. Ries introduces the concept of the Minimum Viable Product (MVP) and the “Build-Measure-Learn” feedback loop, advocating for a scientific approach to creating and managing ventures. The book teaches you how to launch a basic version of your course quickly, gather real-world data and feedback from early students, and iterate rapidly based on validated learning. This methodology minimizes the risk of spending months developing a course that no one wants, ensuring that your time and resources are focused only on features and content that truly resonate with your market.
12. Rework by Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson
Rework is a radical, counterintuitive guide to running a successful business with less. Written by the founders of 37signals (now Basecamp), this book tears down the conventional wisdom of business planning, excessive meetings, and massive scale. It champions a minimalist, focused approach to entrepreneurship, encouraging course creators to start small, stay lean, and focus relentlessly on what truly matters: creating a great product and serving your customers. Rework is a refreshing read that gives you permission to ignore the noise and build a profitable, sustainable course business on your own terms.
13. The Unicorn’s Shadow by Ethan Mollick
The Unicorn’s Shadow explores the hidden truths and often-overlooked realities of the startup world, moving beyond the glamorous, billion-dollar “unicorn” narratives. This book provides a grounded, realistic perspective on what it takes to build a successful, enduring business. It guides entrepreneurs, including course creators, to focus on sustainable growth, genuine value creation, and building a company that can thrive without relying on venture capital or unrealistic hype. It’s an essential read for those who want to build a long-term, profitable e-learning business rather than chasing a quick exit.
14. Rich Dad Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki
Rich Dad Poor Dad is a foundational text in personal finance and a powerful motivator for the entrepreneurial mindset. Robert Kiyosaki contrasts the financial philosophies of his two fathers—his highly educated “poor dad” and his wealthy mentor “rich dad”—to challenge the conventional wisdom about money. The book’s core lesson for course creators is the importance of financial literacy, building assets (like a successful online course business), and understanding the difference between working for money and having money work for you. It provides the financial and psychological framework necessary to view your course as a true asset that generates passive income and builds long-term wealth.
15. Building a StoryBrand by Donald Miller
Donald Miller’s Building a StoryBrand provides a simple, seven-part framework to clarify your course’s message so that customers listen. Miller argues that most businesses fail because their marketing is confusing. By positioning your student as the Hero and your course as the Guide, you create a narrative that instantly resonates. This book is a must-read for course creators, offering a practical tool to rewrite your sales pages, course descriptions, and marketing emails to be instantly clear, compelling, and conversion-focused, ensuring your ideal student immediately understands how your course will solve their problem and transform their life.
16. e-Learning and the Science of Instruction by Ruth Colvin Clark and Richard E. Mayer
e-Learning and the Science of Instruction is the definitive, research-based guide for designing effective multimedia learning. Clark and Mayer synthesize decades of cognitive science research into a set of 12 practical design principles—such as the multimedia principle, the coherence principle, and the personalization principle—that are proven to maximize learning and retention. For the course creator, this book is the ultimate authority on how to combine text, audio, and visuals in a way that optimizes the student’s cognitive load, ensuring that every design choice you make directly contributes to deeper understanding and better learning outcomes.
17. Michael Allen’s Guide to e-Learning by Dr. Michael Allen
Dr. Michael Allen, a pioneer in the field, provides a comprehensive and pragmatic guide to designing truly effective e-learning. His book is a powerful corrective to the common mistake of simply digitizing old classroom materials. Allen emphasizes the importance of meaningful context, challenging content, and consequential feedback to create engaging, interactive learning experiences. For subject matter experts, this book is the essential roadmap for translating deep knowledge into a structured, high-impact online course that delivers measurable results and stands out in a crowded market.
From Reader to Creator: Time to Build Your Course
Reading these books will give you a clear path forward, whether you are struggling with how to structure your content or how to get your course in front of the right people. The knowledge you gain will help you create a course that is well-designed, useful, and successful. Once you have your content planned, the next step is to find a platform to host and sell it.
If you are looking for a simple course platform, then Klasio would be the best choice for you. That’s because it’s a platform that is designed to launch your course in under 30 minutes, even if you have no tech skills.
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